


Peaches to lovers

by i_gaze_at_scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2020-01-15 04:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18491152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: Associative memory is a bitch.Post-Mulder abduction.





	Peaches to lovers

It is sickeningly sweet. Sweet to the point that she can taste it on the back of her tongue where bitter things live. Or maybe it is bitter and she’s too desensitized to tell. Maybe she’s too tired to bother.

 _It’s just a fucking peach, Dana_ , she scolds herself. She breathes deep.  _Enjoy it, would you?_

But it tastes like acid now, or silver. Pickle juice, for all she knows. It is inedible. She throws it in the trash, listens to the voice in the back of her head as it drop two octaves.

 _Scully_ , it calls, and she plugs her ears. Mulder loved peaches. The tack on her fingers brings her back to summer nights in that bedroom right there, his peach sweet breath in her mouth and sticky fingers tracing a circle around her navel.

 _Associative memory_ , he sighs.  _We connect unrelated concepts, like names to people._

“Like peaches to lovers,” she whispers aloud.

She stands up off his couch, gripping the arm rest for balance. Associative memory. A connect-the-dots between his worn leather couch and late night foot rubs, between Old Spice and steamy showers where no one got clean. His hallway linked to a kiss that would’ve knocked her unconscious and the bee that really did. She can leave this place and go home when the pain is too much. She can, but she doesn’t.

Because at home, she’ll have to see that headband, the one she wore in Hollywood. The navy dress she wore on their first real date.  _I like that color on you_ , he’d crooned. The vase that the flowers he brought her for Valentine’s day came in–oh he wore such a goofy grin that day, the sap. That new lampshade she bought when they knocked over her lamp making love, too. Take them down, pack them up, hide them away in a box under her bed (lord knows she could never,  _ever_  throw them away).

But she cannot pack the rest of the world away. Afghan blankets and Shiner Bocks and Chinese takeout cartons. Iced tea and root beer and manilla folders. There is nowhere to run that she won’t run into him.

 _Oh Scully_ , he murmurs. _Don’t cry_. She touches her finger to her cheek, surprised at the rivulet she finds making its way to her lips. The salt reminds her of sunflower seeds and she can hear the  _crack_ , see him smile around the shell.

She cups her protruding stomach, encloses it in her arms, retreats to his bedroom.

Her child,  _their child_ , will have no memories to associate with his father. He will watch a Knicks game and feel no pain. He will listen to Elvis and sing  _Jeremiah was a bullfrog_  at camps, free from this associative hell. He will not live in a world where Fox Mulder is everywhere and nowhere, a world she will inhabit for the rest of her life.

She does not envy her child. She weeps for him.

She sticks her nose in Mulder’s pillow and a vice clamps around her heart when she realizes his scent has faded, nearly gone now. She curls up on her side, imagines his body wrapped around her, feels his face scrunch into her neck as he winces with her pain.

 _Shh_ , she lets his ghost whisper in her ear as the agony of it threatens to consume her.  _I’m here. I’m here._

She breaks.


End file.
